


Comme des Étoiles dans le Ciel

by pickwicklingpapers



Series: Cophine AUs [7]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, oops i did it again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 23:56:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6399379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickwicklingpapers/pseuds/pickwicklingpapers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>soulmate au but we're not soulmates</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comme des Étoiles dans le Ciel

When she was very young, Delphine’s grandmother told her a story. It was very sad and very beautiful, all about love and life and death, but what Delphine took out of it is that up in the blackest night, there’s a star for every person who ever lived and who has ever died, and when we die, we get to go and join them, watching the Earth for millennia, protecting it and its people.

Delphine’s grandma used to say that some stars winked and twinkled because they were waiting for their soulmates – they were waiting for their other half to die so that they could be in the sky, strong and bright and beautiful forever. The brightest stars were the ones with the truest, purest love, the kind of love that you only see in stories; that you never actually get to feel.

Delphine grew up and chose science over fantasy, but she never quite forgot the stars.

 

* * *

 

Delphine was born with the name “Anton” branded across her ribs in formal cursive.

Cosima was born with the word “Shay” curling around her wrist, scrawled gently, lazily.

Both were considered a perfect match.

 

* * *

 

“Enchanté”

And that is the moment Delphine Cormier falls in love.

 

* * *

 

Cosima is a believer. She thinks Delphine is too, doesn’t understand how anyone couldn’t be, and so she misses how much she hurts the blonde when she speculates about a future lover when her current one’s just done all she can to make Cosima notice her.

“I wish I could find her, you know?” Cosima said, tracing the letters across Delphine’s ribs. “I read all the books, all the literature. I thought that if I knew more, it would be easier somehow.” She sighed. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like it’s more of a curse than anything – knowing that there is this person out there who will make you happy, who is literally your other half, but not being able to find them? I always reckoned that’s where divorces and shit come from. Just people being so desperate to find the soulmate that they take anyone with that same name and in doing so, miss the person that they’re really supposed to be with.” Cosima lay back, hugging her pillow. “I don’t know who Shay is – and luckily it’s not an amazingly common name – but when I find her, it’s going to be beautiful.”

Delphine nods, glad that Cosima is staring upwards. Soulmates are a curse, because sometimes your name is wrong. Sometimes your star won’t ever stop winking.

 

* * *

 

Cosima catches her lying and then it’s all over. It can’t be same again, it can’t recover, because that trust is gone. Cosima takes a knife and stabs her with it, over and over again. Delphine cries, cries properly for the first time since she can remember, because Cosima is so angry, _so_ angry. All Delphine can do is defend herself, and she can’t even do that properly because she can’t lay this burden on Cosima – not romantic Cosima who still doodles her soulmate’s name on notebooks without thinking, fairytale Cosima who doesn’t yet realise that there are things deeper and darker in the world than keeping and telling secrets.

They’re not soulmates but this can’t be a lie – Delphine’s never been with a woman before. Damn that – she’s never been in _love_ before. And Cosima’s right. It shows.

 

* * *

 

They’re sat on the sofa together when the code comes through. Cosima is copyrighted. The clones – they’re all copyrighted. In the single biggest breach of human rights and violation of ethics that Delphine has ever seen, heard of, or even dared to imagine, every single piece of genetic material belongs to DYAD. Even little Kira. What’s the point in having words on your skin when choices as big as this are coded inside your genome? Is there no freedom in this world – no choice who to love, no choice who to belong to? Is anything nurture in this sick game of twisted evolution? Or is Delphine the only one who’s so angry that every little choice is mapped out by someone else before you get to make it?

The clones are understandably angry. Legally, they don’t even belong to themselves. Delphine wants to walk up to Cosima, shake the print out at her and shout _now you know how I feel_. But she doesn’t. That would be cruel. Cosima wouldn’t think it compared. She’s right. It probably doesn’t.

But if there’s anyone who understands how Cosima feels right now, it’s Delphine.

 

* * *

 

_cosima’s dying cosima’s dying cosima’s dying_

They’re not soulmates, but Delphine can’t let her die. So she takes Kira’s tooth and she uses it. She blackmails Scott and she hates the person she’s becoming, but she’d rather hate herself than see Cosima become a star on her own.

 

* * *

 

When she’s drunk, Cosima likes to wax lyrical about soulmates and how perfect they are, how that kind of love must be everlasting and unbreakable. Delphine thinks about the name on her ribs and the head in her lap, and whether you can change something that’s already chosen for you.

Cosima doesn’t know French, which makes it easy for Delphine to break her vow of silence and whisper truths into the midnight air or into Cosima’s skin. She avoids the obvious phrases, mutters love letters under her breath instead. Traces poetry on top of Cosima’s traitorous soulmark, poetry made all the sweeter by the parchment it’s written on. Sometimes she goes outside and gazes at the sky, whispers how much she cares about the girl to the stars. She thinks she sees some of them twinkle back in sympathy.

It’s nice to know she’s not the only one.

 

* * *

 

Rachel makes it personal with a sneer and condescending tone .She knows. Somehow, she knows. It’s enough make Delphine laugh – the one person that she hates the most in this festering company is the one that understands her best. She has to laugh, because if she doesn’t, she’ll cry instead. And whilst Rachel’s a bitch about most things, she seems to have decided not to be a bitch about this. It looks like she’s met someone else who doesn’t believe in the miracle of soulmates. Delphine wonders what happened to her, whether it was Paul or whether it was someone else longer ago, and then cringes at the thought of having anything in common with Rachel.

 

* * *

 

She comes back from Frankfurt with a new wardrobe and a fresh sense of purpose. She knows more of Topside’s plans now, and she’ll do anything to keep Cosima safe. She’s the newer, better Rachel, driven by fierce love rather than petty revenge, and whilst it’s obvious that all the clones hate her, she promised to love all the sisters equally, and that means keeping them safe whether they like it or not.

She knows Cosima hates her, knows that Cosima thinks she lied – and she did, she did lie. She concealed the truth and kept information from her, but Cosima can’t see that it was all for her survival, because Cosima still wholeheartedly believes in soulmates.

Delphine stands outside Felix’s loft and the only thing running through her head is _i love you i love you i love you_ but that doesn’t matter to Cosima as much as it should because they are not soulmates.

Cosima comes outside and stares her down with icy eyes. There’s tears, and the words are hard but somewhere in there, Cosima says _I think I could have loved you if I had tried_ _but maybe this is for the best because you are not my soulmate_ , and Delphine replies with _tomorrow morning you need to come in for more testing_ and nearly can’t say the words because she almost started with ‘I need you’ and any sentence starting like that would have stopped three words in. Instead she turns just before the stairs and finally tells Cosima the story behind the handwriting on her ribs.

Anton was a boy at her school, and then a boy at her uni, and then a boy who let her go to DYAD. Delphine doesn’t know if it was ever really love, but Anton was comfort and home. Anton was a foreign dream cut short by a rigid alarm. Delphine had been approached by Leekie and Anton had waved her off with cheers of good luck – more friend than lover, a hundred times over. Delphine had been tasked with going to America, finding Cosima, and discovering what she knew. There were to be no gaps in her story, no holes through which any chance of homesickness or loyalty to any other cause but DYAD’s could leak. The soulmate withered.

Cosima goes back inside. Delphine rests her head on the wall and her tears remind of stars.

 

* * *

 

Cosima meets Shay on a lesbian dating app.

It’s almost an insult, really. And for the whole thing to be set up by Felix, who hates her anyway? It’s just adding extra pain to a wound that’s been festering for six months straight.

She wishes she could move, could get past it. She throws herself into work, but Cosima is her work. Everywhere she looks, Cosima’s face stares back at her. Even visiting Krystal, poor naive Krystal, is painful. The poor girl does her nails beautifully, but prattles on about soulmates and how she can’t wait to find hers because all her boyfriends have been deadbeats, but she feels like maybe that was only because she wasn’t 100% invested and, let’s be honest between us girls, why would you invest yourself fully into a relationship that you knew was going to fail? Yeah, she likes sex and she’s not afraid to admit that, but do you really want the emotional baggage of a heavyset relationship when you know that one day you’re going to leave for your soulmate? Oh, and one time she heard this story about how when you died, you and your soulmate were stars together.

Delphine has to excuse herself to go to the bathroom. She’s the director of an international, pseudo government organisation. She can’t cry in public. Crying alone, that’s something she’s used to.

 

* * *

 

Sarah gives her looks every now and again, in between the shouting and the anger. Little nods, like she knows. It makes sense, she supposes, that Sarah who saw her soulmate’s mark and ran would understand best how she feels. But understanding isn’t the same as knowing – Sarah and Cal are perfect together, and despite the rocky start, they support each other perfectly, like they’re ready to build a ladder to the sky and climb it hand in hand.

Mrs. S, who’s soulmate was a drunk bastard – she sometimes shows some sympathy, offers tea or a shoulder.

They all assume the same thing, and they all assume wrong. Cosima doesn’t want her, Cosima’s happy with Shay, yes, that bit’s true, but Cosima’s soulmate isn’t Delphine. That’s the whole problem.

 

* * *

 

It turns out that Delphine’s not the only one keeping secrets. Cosima and Scott have apparently had the clue to unravelling the illness this entire time and, in an extraordinary feat of idiocy, decided to keep that information to themselves. Delphine knows that Cosima doesn’t trust her, but this is Cosima’s life, not something to be joked about and bargained for. Not something to be stolen by Castor.

But then the cipher and potential key to everything that Delphine has worked for, has sacrificed for, is stolen at gunpoint, except it’s a fucking cat that’s the hostage and now Delphine’s got to fix this mess and find the leak. She works herself to the bone, poring over personnel files and information that is way too sensitive and personal for her to have it, but she does anyway because this is Cosima’s safety at stake. The leak didn’t come from within DYAD, so it must have come from the clones’ side of things. There’s only one person who seems suspicious. Cosima’s not going to like it, but there doesn’t seem to be another culprit.

Cosima loses a little bit of trust in Shay, and Delphine’s almost tempted to push further, to see if she can break the clone’s perception of soulmates. She stops. There’s too much Rachel, too much DYAD in that move. Sometimes she’s scared of what she’s become.

 

* * *

 

And so Delphine meets Shay because even if they’re not together, she has to know that Cosima is safe.  If Shay is Castor, then she will be taken down. Soulmate or not, Delphine will not risk Cosima’s life. She’s made harder choices than this before without telling Cosima. This isn’t personal, it’s just good business. The clones have to stay safe. Even Topside can’t argue with that.

(Maybe there’s a little bit of jealousy)

 

* * *

 

There’s death threats to her office and an attack inside her own building. Delphine knows that she’s pushed too far, but it’s too late for regrets now. It’s been too late ever since the wrong name was tattooed on her at birth, ever since the melanin in her body betrayed her. She’s pushed DYAD and she’s pushed Topside. She may have stopped Helsinki, but she’s signed her own death warrant in the process.

She doesn’t regret anything that she’s done. She’d like to tell Cosima that. Make sure she knows. One last time.

 

* * *

 

And in the middle of this, Alison’s running for school trustee, which she’s apparently funding by running a drug ring, which Delphine completely missed but hey, Dr. Nealon did just try to murder her, so maybe she can be excused for not being quite up to date on the constant gossip surrounding Alison Hendrix’s life. She meets Cosima outside the soap shop, which was apparently also the front for said drug dealings, but is currently hosting a family meal to which everyone is invited. Except her.

But at least Shay isn’t either.

Delphine came here to tell Cosima everything, to tell her about how she’s always loved her and how she always will and how everything she’s ever done, every betrayal, it’s all been for her.

But then Cosima opens her perfect mouth and just talks. Talks about how she’s started talking to Shay again and how she thinks that they might be happy, and how Kira’s started school in Iceland, and how Alison made the school board, and how Helena’s doing so much better these days.

Delphine takes one look through the window at the meal, at the poor girls who have been put through so much and have survived it all, and can’t bring herself to ruin it. There’s one thing she can do though, on last thing before she goes. She fulfils that old promise, and gives the sisters all her love. She won’t be needing it anymore. They can share. She kisses Cosima and leaves.

 

* * *

 

The garage is cold and dark and grey and exactly the kind of place that Delphine would have chosen, had she ever had to do something like this. There’s a small sliver of sky in which she can see a star. It’s her last chance, so she makes sure to ask the question that matters most to her.

_what will happen to her_

 

* * *

 

There’s beauty in the stars, but there’s beauty down here too, and Delphine just wants to appreciate it. There’s beauty in the way that leaves fall from trees, beauty in the way that wind causes ripples on water, beauty in the way that Cosima’s eyes shine every time she puts that labcoat on. Delphine doesn’t want to be a star, not if it means winking her way through existence, watching Cosima carry on with Shay. She’ll never be a full star, because soulmate or not, she loves Cosima. Words scrawled on an arm can’t change the name tattooed on her heart. Delphine knows – oh, she knows – that if Cosima were part of her star, then she’d shine so bright, so brightly that there’d be a second sun in the sky, one that would never age, never die, never kill the world. Without Cosima, Delphine doesn’t know if she’s got any light left in her at all.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so sorry i had a shit day today and then i took it all out on delphine i'm sorry delphine


End file.
